Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment she has made of the deliverability of the Northern Powerhouse Rail project.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
As announced in the Autumn 2024 Budget, we are maintaining momentum on Northern Powerhouse Rail by progressing planning and design works to support future delivery. This improved rail connectivity in the north is a vital step towards better linking people and jobs, creating opportunities for everyone and we will set out further details in due course.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure families from disadvantaged backgrounds have access to high quality childcare provision.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government’s Plan for Change sets out a commitment to give children the best start in life. Low-income families, children with education, health and care plans and looked after children are eligible for 15 hours funded early education from age two until they start school. In addition to this, eligible disadvantaged children can get early years pupil premium (EYPP). This additional funding supports the delivery of high quality early education that improves disadvantaged children’s outcomes. In December 2024, the department announced an unprecedented 45% increase to EYPP from 1 April 2025.
Support for disadvantaged children is also reflected when distributing core funding for the entitlements. The early years national funding formulae (EYNFFs) are used to determine the hourly rates to fund individual local authorities for early years entitlements. The EYNFFs target funding to local authorities where it is needed most and each include an additional needs factor that accounts for 10.5% of entitlement funding. This needs factor comprises of an 8% deprivation factor, a 1.5% English as an additional language factor and a 1% Disability Allowance factor. Local authorities are responsible for setting individual provider funding rates in consultation with their providers and schools forum, and fund providers using their own local funding formula, which may include a deprivation supplement.
Local authorities are required by legislation to provide sufficient childcare places for children in their local area. The department has regular contact with each local authority in England about their sufficiency and any issues they are facing. Where local authorities report sufficiency challenges, we discuss what action they are taking to address those issues and, where needed, support the local authority with any specific requirements through our childcare sufficiency support contract. If a parent is unable to secure a place, they should contact their local authority.
The department is also supporting the creation of new places. School-based nurseries are a key part of this government’s opportunity mission, delivering on our Plan for Change by expanding high quality early education across England. We have awarded 300 primary-phase schools £37 million to repurpose spare space for new or expanded nursery provision, opening from September 2025, to support the expansion of childcare entitlements. School-based nurseries are particularly well-placed to support families in disadvantaged areas, with over a quarter of providers in the most deprived areas based in schools. For the school-based nurseries grant, applications for the grant were scored more highly if they clearly evidenced a focus on supporting children from disadvantaged families. This was validated using departmental data relating to established disadvantaged factors.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps she is taking to mitigate rail congestion across East-West rail lines in the north of England.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Rail Network Enhancements Pipeline portfolio contains some of the most transformative and important programmes in the country such as the TransPennine Route Upgrade, which will increase capacity and improve reliability of East to West rail lines in the north of England.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps she is taking to target additional judicial resources toward court settings which are at capacity in Greater Manchester.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
We are continuing to invest in judicial recruitment nationally, across all jurisdictions, with plans to recruit around 1000 judges and tribunal members in 2025-26; and around 2,000 magistrates in 2025-26, and annually thereafter. Following recruitment, regional and court level deployment decisions are a matter for the judiciary, and we support actions to flexibly deploy judges to maximise capacity where it is needed.
Our assessment is that overall there is currently sufficient judicial capacity in the courts in the North West, including Greater Manchester. Any vacancies which may arise as a result of departures are expected to be filled through planned recruitment.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps she is taking to ensure the resilience of critical transport infrastructure in the north of England.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The government is committed to ensuring the resilience of the transport network across the UK, including vital services in the North of England. We work closely with transport operators to prevent and respond to the range of risks the sector faces: and aid them in assessing their vulnerabilities and implementing contingency planning arrangements.
Transport related risks to resilience are kept under review, including through the internal, classified National Security Risk Assessment, and the external-facing version, the National Risk Register, to ensure that we effectively plan at the national and local levels. This includes risks around adverse weather conditions, security threats and accidents.
We are also conducting a Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) review to support our work, building our understanding of the CNI landscape and the wide variety of systems, dependencies and redundancies that keep it running. This work is strengthening our ability to plan against risks and threats and bolster our incident response capabilities, ensuring our Critical National Infrastructure is resilient and secure.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps she plans to take to support the use of shore power technology to aid maritime decarbonisation.
Answered by Mike Kane - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Government has published its Maritime Decarbonisation Strategy and a core policy within this is taking action to reduce emissions from vessels whilst at berth. Whilst the Government remains technology neutral, we recognise that shore power will play a role in reducing emissions from vessels whilst at berth, supporting our mission to make Britain a Clean Energy Superpower.
The UK Shipping Office for Reducing Emissions programme has previously allocated over £33m to five shore power demonstrator projects at Aberdeen, Atlantic and Peninsula Falmouth, Cammel Laird shipyard, Leith and Portsmouth.
The Government has also published a call for evidence on Net Zero Ports which will explore the opportunities and barriers to reducing emissions at berth, with a focus on the role ports can play in enabling the shipping sector to decarbonise.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to help tackle (a) violence and (b) abuse against retail delivery drivers.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
Shop theft continues to increase at an unacceptable level with more and more offenders using violence and abuse against shopworkers to do this. We will not stand for this. Everybody has a right to feel safe at their place of work.
Through our Crime and Policing Bill, we have introduced a standalone offence of assaulting a retail worker to protect the hardworking and dedicated staff that work in stores, sending a strong message to offenders and would-be offenders that violence against retail workers will not be tolerated. The Bill is making its way through Parliament and had its Second Reading on 10 March.
As introduced, the definition of a 'retail worker' does not include delivery drivers. Keeping a tight definition provides legal clarity and ensures there is less ambiguity for courts in identifying whether an individual is a retail worker and impacted during their job. Workers whose roles are not included are already covered under other legislation such as the Offences against the Person Act 1861, which also covers more serious violence, such as actual bodily harm (ABH) and grievous bodily harm (GBH).
That said, the whole purpose of the parliamentary process is to scrutinise the provisions in the Bill and we will, of course, consider carefully any amendments and supporting evidence.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the factors that contribute to people being unable to access NHS dentists in Greater Manchester.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
To rebuild dentistry in the long term and increase access to National Health Service dental care, we will reform the dental contract, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists.
There are no perfect payment systems and careful consideration needs to be given to any potential changes to the complex dental system, so that we deliver a system better for patients and the profession.
We are continuing to meet with the British Dental Association and other representatives of the dental sector to discuss how we can best deliver our shared ambition to improve access for NHS dental patients. We want to ensure that any reform takes into account the views of dentists across England, including in Greater Manchester.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps she plans to take to help increase awareness of careers in the maritime sector.
Answered by Mike Kane - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Department continues to support industry to improve the awareness of careers in the maritime sector though the implementation of the Ratings Review and the Cadet Review, both of which were undertaken by the Maritime Skills Commission. The Cadet Review is being delivered through the Cadet Training & Modernisation programme and promoting seafaring career pathways is an important part of that work. A new maritime strategy is in development, which will include a focus on maritime careers.
Additionally, the Department continues to work with stakeholders, such as Maritime UK, on careers promotion and has supported Maritime UK’s Maritime Roadshow for Girls, which promotes STEM and maritime careers in schools. Officials are also working with Maritime UK’s Careers Taskforce, which coordinates careers outreach activity across the sector.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will (a) extend legal protections for and (b) improve financial security available to foster carers.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The Children’s Act 1989 and subsequent statutory guidance sets out strong safeguards to protect foster carers from unfair treatment, including the requirement for fostering services to have a complaints procedure and whistle-blowing policy. The department does not plan any changes to foster carers’ legal position, but we are committed to reviewing our guidance and working with the sector to improve the support that foster carers receive.
No foster carer should be financially disadvantaged because of their fostering role. We expect all foster carers to receive at least the weekly National Minimum Allowance (NMA), in addition to any agreed expenses to cover the full cost of caring for each child placed with them, as per the National Minimum Standards (NMS, standard 28). In the 2025/26 financial year, this is being uplifted by 3.55%.
The department is concerned by reports that a minority of foster carers are not receiving the allowance in full, and the effect this can have on carer retention. Foster carers should report any underpayment to their fostering service in the first instance. If underpayment continues, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman will investigate any reports they receive on this issue.
Foster carers also benefit from reformed tax and benefit allowances which ensure they receive the best support for their individual financial circumstances, in recognition of their role.